Honey, I Shrunk the Family

On Earth Day many were thinking of ways to be green. Few of us were considering what is probably the greenest behavior of all. My Earth Day contribution was to pass out Endangered Species Condoms at some events over this past weekend. These condoms are a wonderful project of the Center for Biological Diversity, aimed at raising awareness of the role played by human population growth in pushing species off the planet at an alarming rate.

I became an early volunteer in this Center program because I wanted to support any environmental organization that has the courage to tell the truth about overpopulation. Talking about population growth became un-PC in recent decades. At GrowthBusters we are busy changing that.

I’m pretty sure I’ve handed out more Endangered Species Condoms since that program began than any other volunteer. I find them an excellent way to introduce the topics of population growth and overpopulation. They’re quite the ice-breakers!

We took a camera crew on Saturday to capture my adventures in growthbusting and contraception (nothing TOO racy here), and I found the conversations very illuminating. I asked people attending Earth Day events about good ways to be green, and the lion’s share of the answers showed a surprising lack of true understanding of the predicament we are in thanks to our overshoot of the planet’s carrying capacity. It was disheartening. But I take joy in knowing that I opened a few eyes by having the conversations these condoms enabled. See the video.

One of my key messages about overpopulation is that we CAN do something about it. No oppressive or coercive measures are necessary if we can all come out of the dark ages, discard our misplaced puritan PC ethic, and begin a worldwide conversation in which we…

Acknowledge the world is overpopulated

Accept overpopulation as everybody’s problem (North America and Australia are overpopulated just like Nigeria and Pakistan)

Refuse to accept continued growth as a fait accompli

Educate everyone about the need to reduce world population (and that means local population, too!)

Recommend highly that the most loving thing a couple can do for their children is have very few of them

Dave GardnerFilmmaker & GrowthBuster

Dave Gardner is director of the groundbreaking documentary, GrowthBusters: Hooked on Growth. Please support the GrowthBusters project’s ongoing public education efforts, like this Endangered Species Condoms video. Your donation (tax deductible in the U.S.) will help us create more public education media.